In a New Light

Content warnings: Death of a parent, adoption

“And then you hit return and there you go,” Deirdre explained to Mrs Booker, clicking the mouse to complete a Google search for her most helpless library patron. “If you need any help figuring out which results are reliable, just wave me down,” she added. She had no doubt that Mrs Booker would be raising her hand soon for more assistance. Deirdre had been the head of reference in the small library branch for the past year, and Mrs Booker had been spending more and more time there as the months went by. She reminded herself that at least Mrs Booker’s need for constant help gave Deirdre some job security.  

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Mrs Booker called in a loud whisper, “Oh, Ms Quinn! I seem to have uninstalled the network printer. Can you help me with that?” Deirdre sighed and reinstalled the printer, assuring Mrs Booker facetiously that this sort of thing happened regularly to all of her patrons. Then she saw Emolyn the cataloger come around the corner and sit at the reference desk, which indicated that it was time for Deirdre’s afternoon break.

The library’s break room was lit only by sunshine from the window when Deirdre walked in, but she welcomed the natural light after the bright fluorescents of the reading room. She turned on the electric kettle and hunted for one of her favorite mugs in the cabinet, looking for the orange and black that usually stood out among the white mugs. Jerome, one of her favorite coworkers who usually took his break at the same time, entered the break room and automatically turned on the overhead light, which allowed Deirdre to find the mug toward the back of the shelf. 

“Go Bengals,” the tech services librarian said mildly.

“Excuse me?” Deirdre responded, selecting a tea bag from a box on the shelf. Jerome nodded to her mug, which carried the logo of the Cincinnati football team.

“Oh yes, it’s my dad’s mug. Was. He was a big fan. I guess I should use a different mug at work if I don’t want to get it smashed by rabid Detroit fans.” She poured the water over her tea bag and crossed the room to sit at the table with Jerome.

“Girl, no one in this library cares about the Lions enough to smash anything. These are a bunch of library nerds like me who watch Jeopardy! every night and miss all of the sports questions. Now speaking of dads, did you get those results back?” Jerome neatly changed the subject, “They said it would be about eight weeks, so I feel like that email could be coming any day now.”

A few months earlier, Deirdre and Jerome had taken a DNA test through a popular genealogical site to try to connect with family members. For Jerome, who had been raised by a single mother, it was about trying to figure out how many unknown siblings he might have, rather than reconnecting with his deadbeat father. As for Deirdre, her adoptive parents had been killed in an accident a few years earlier. After the loss of the only family she’d ever known, she had started to think about her biological family. She’d been born in Ann Arbor and lived the first two years of her life there before her mom got a job offer in Cincinnati. When she saw the posting for this job in Ann Arbor, she knew she had to take it and return to the place she came from. Jerome finally convinced her to take the plunge with him, and now they awaited their DNA results with some nervousness as well as excitement.

Deirdre bounced her leg up and down while dunking her tea bag in and out of her mug. Her roommate Bellamy, the owner of a local tea shop, would have scolded her for improper steeping technique, but she also would have scolded her for using a tea bag in the first place. Jerome spotted Deirdre’s nervous tell.

“Feeling anxious about the DNA results?” he asked, donning a cute pair of reading glasses before starting on his crossword puzzle.

“I just worry that I’ll be a disappointment. You know? I mean, I don’t know why they put me up for adoption, but they had their reasons. They might be disappointed if they meet me. Maybe that sounds dumb.”

Jerome took the reading glasses back off and took Deirdre’s hand. “You have plenty of people who love you. You don’t need them. But I think they will love you just like we do. And they’ll want to brag that they have a published author in the family!” he joked.

Deirdre laughed lightly. “Unpublished author of many manuscripts in various states of completion for now,” she corrected, “But thank you for the vote of confidence. I just started working on a romance novel, but I’m stuck. The romance tropes like friends-to-lovers and enemies-to-lovers make so much sense when I read them in novels, but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around them enough to write it myself.”

“It’s all around you, girl. You keep an eye on those teenagers who are always coming to the library together, Ethan and Emma. I’m always watching them to see when they figure out that they both like each other. Or even me and Fidel. We were rivals for years in school, always trying to outdo each other, and then we ended up on the same Spring Break trip senior year and it was like I saw him in a new light. By which I mean, I saw him in a swimsuit for the first time.”

Deirdre chuckled and Jerome continued, “Sometimes there’s just a small change and you realize that under all the friendship or the fighting there’s someone there who sees you in a different way than anybody else does. And that can change the way you see them too.”

§ § §

After her break, Deirdre returned to the reading room to take over for Emolyn at the reference desk. Emolyn jumped and let out a quiet, library-appropriate squeak when Deirdre approached the desk.

“Sorry! It’s been so quiet here I got really into Symphony metadata and lost track of the world,” the cataloger apologized, nodding to the system she’d pulled up on the reference desk computer. Emolyn stood up to make room for Deirdre. 

“Excuse me, Ms Rogers,” Mrs Booker whispered to Emolyn, “I have a problem that I need Ms Quinn’s help with. She’s so useful to the library, you know. A real benefit to the community. She should get a raise for all the help she has to give me alone. Now can you help me find the login page for my email program again, sweetie?”

Deirdre sighed and helped Mrs Booker log in to her email, then also showed her how to log into the browser so that she could save bookmarks for sites she wanted to visit frequently, even when she used the public computer. She knew that Mrs Booker meant well, but it seemed like she made the same mistakes and forgot the same things over and over again. It was unusual to see someone just one generation older than herself need so much help with technology, or for her to spend so much time at the library during the day. Deirdre was puzzled by this, but didn’t have much time to think about it because the library was closing in fifteen minutes and she hadn’t given the patrons warning yet. Deirdre headed to the circulation desk to make the announcement over the PA system.  When she returned to the reference desk, she found Mrs Booker standing there, peering at a legal pad where Deirdre had jotted down ideas for her romance novel. 

“Are you writing a book? That looks fantastic. I’m sure it’s going to be great. Such a talent with the patrons, and an author too!” the older woman beamed. Deirdre snatched up the legal pad and held it to her chest. 

“Mrs Booker!” she snapped, her voice a bit louder than the typical library whisper. “This is private! What is it? What do you need help with now?” she said, a bit more shortly than she would have, but she was feeling exposed from Mrs Booker reading her notes. Mrs Booker looked a bit taken aback. 

“Well, I need help with… um…” Mrs Booker seemed lost for words after the way Deirdre had spoken to her, on the heels of months of patient assistance.

“Did you wipe the hard drives with a magnet this time? Why is Google so difficult? What is the matter with you?” Deirdre put her face in her hands and screamed internally, then took a deep breath and walked away. It was not her proudest moment as a librarian or a person. She told Jerome she was leaving early. As she exited the library, she saw Mrs Booker sitting at a table with a sad look on her face and felt even worse about how she’d just spoken to her.

§ § §

Deirdre opened the door into her apartment and found Bellamy singing along with Paul Simon while washing dishes. She turned off the water and music when she saw Deirdre had arrived, then pointed to a few pieces of mail on the kitchen counter. 

“I didn’t see anything that looked like it was from a publisher today,” she told Deirdre.

“I guess it’s better to know nothing than to get a rejection,” Deirdre responded.

“How’s that romance novel going? I need a juicy draft to read during the mid-afternoon lull. It’s been months since the last one.” Bellamy was a voracious reader and always got first dibs on reading her work.

“I've barely even started. I have done a lot of staring at the blinking cursor over the last week,” Deirdre admitted. “Jerome said some really wise things today about seeing love all around, and seeing people in a new light, but it’s hard for me to figure out how to apply it in this book.”

“You know, I did wonder if…” Bellamy searched for the words hesitatingly, “I wondered if it was too soon for writing a romance novel. It’s been less than two years since you and Malcolm broke up, and for that to happen so soon after your parents died… you’ve been through a lot. I think you have a lot of pain and fear to work through. Maybe you need to take a break from romance and write another sci-fi murder mystery instead.”

“Maybe I need to take a break altogether. It’s been a rough day. I’m going to take a glass of wine upstairs and think about it.” Deirdre went up to her bedroom, sat at her desk, and breathed deeply to calm herself. She hadn’t thought about Malcolm in quite a while. She’d tried not to think about him for so long, but hearing Bellamy say his name for the first time in a year was like a punch to the gut. Malcolm had dumped her just months after she’d lost her parents. She realized that it was hard to think about love without connecting it with loss and pain, and that’s why she was so blocked. She couldn’t quite remember anymore what it felt like to have someone see her in a way no one else did.

But making that connection still didn’t solve the problem. She pulled out a legal pad and a favorite pen, then took Jerome’s advice and started making a list to brainstorm:

What love looks like

• Fidel dropping off Jerome’s lunch when he forgot it
• Ethan and Emma laughing together as they try to sneak snacks into the reading room (Deirdre usually pretended she didn’t see)
• Bellamy driving four hours each way to Cincinnati to see her sister
• Emolyn setting up Google alerts to send job postings to her friend who was miserable at work

When she thought about her friends, she realized each of them saw something special in her. Bellamy dropped everything when Deirdre needed a shoulder to cry on. Jerome saw the author he believed she could become. Emolyn came over and helped her paint her room when she’d only just moved to town. Even Mrs Booker, despite being frustrating, was so vocally appreciative of her help, always singing her praises to other library staff and patrons.

An email alert came in on her laptop as Deirdre was continuing her list, and she clicked on it. At the same time, her cellphone rang. She looked down at the display and saw that Jerome was calling. She bounced her foot up and down again as she answered in a wavering voice. She felt like her whole body was shaking and tight at the same time.

“Is this it?” she asked, her voice wavering and barely more than a whisper.

Jerome sounded almost as nervous on the other end. “Open the email and let’s click on the link at the same time,” he suggested. “Three, two, one, CLICK!”

Deirdre clicked on the email and saw her DNA connections. Deirdre recognized a face in a profile picture at the top of the page and she got goosebumps. Her stomach dropped, then she burst into tears and cried until she started hiccupping. 

“Are you still there?” Jerome asked when her crying and sniffling slowed down.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” Deirdre answered.

“Are you going to be okay? I don’t have much, just some cousins. But it sounds like you got some big news.” Jerome pointed out tenderly.

“I… I found my biological mother. And it’s Mrs Booker, the patron who’s always asking me for computer help. I was awful to her today and all she was doing was taking an interest in me and my work… oh,” Deirdre realized. “Wait, she doesn’t ask you for help, does she? And she doesn’t ask Emolyn either. It’s just me, isn’t it? Because she knew.” 

Jerome started putting some pieces together himself. “Mrs Booker is a retired computer engineer. She was always asking you for help? No offense, but you’re not Bill Gates. You write on legal pads. Aw, honey. I think she just wanted an excuse to spend time with you.”

After she hung up with Jerome, she felt exhausted from the crying, but when she lay in bed, she couldn’t fall asleep. It was a relief to know the truth after all these years, but it also made her feel even worse about the things she’d said to Mrs Booker earlier in the day. She tossed and turned for a few hours until she realized what she needed to do.

§ § §

Deirdre was already at the reference desk when Mrs Booker came in the next morning. “Mrs Booker, I want to apologize for the way I spoke to you yesterday. I realize now that you wanted to connect with me, and I want that too. Now I think I should help you open up your email because there may be a message there that you really want to see.”